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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, this is Alison Madam like the

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Speaker 1: science editor at how stuff works dot com. And this

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb, science rider how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us today. We're talking about late pollution, yes,

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Speaker 1: which is not that does not mean mild pollution, diet

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Speaker 1: pollution if we're talking in terms of illumination right physically,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about artificial light shining at night. Essentially, we're

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Speaker 1: shining at the wrong time of day, and night is

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Speaker 1: the wrong time of day. Correct, chew on that one. Listeners. Basically,

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Speaker 1: we live in a world divided into night and day.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not exactly a fifty fifty split, depending on

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Speaker 1: where you happen to live, but still it's a natural

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Speaker 1: order of things. And when you start filling the uh

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Speaker 1: the nighttime with lights, electric lights and and Christmas lights

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Speaker 1: and and and all this, you're screwing it up. And

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Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about. The day is all the

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Speaker 1: ways you can can basically screw up the world around

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Speaker 1: you by lighting it up. Who knew? So what do

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Speaker 1: you see when you look at the night sky? I

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Speaker 1: guess it kind of depends on where you live. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we both live in the Atlanta area. Of course, the

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Speaker 1: Atlanta area is not renowned for being an excellent stargazing place. Right,

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Speaker 1: there's no Midtown Observatory because when I look into the sky,

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Speaker 1: I tend to see either, um, like a seven forty

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Speaker 1: seven going over. I see a lot of those too, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: quite a few. Yeah, I think that's about all we see. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So light pollution is it gets pretty bad, as you

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Speaker 1: can imagine in urban areas. Actually, one thing I found

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Speaker 1: was that you can tell how light pollution affects your

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Speaker 1: area by counting the stars and Orion and alright is

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Speaker 1: my favorite constellation anyway, because it's so easy to pick out,

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Speaker 1: which what what is it shaped light? Well, it's got

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Speaker 1: the four corners and then it has the diagonal belt.

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Speaker 1: When you see it in the the book, like what

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Speaker 1: does it look like a man like strangling a goat

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Speaker 1: or something like? They all would look like something tremendously elaborate.

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Speaker 1: And it's always like a square. Yeah, I mean it

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Speaker 1: is pretty much a square, but I picture it is

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Speaker 1: being a man with a like a toga and a

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Speaker 1: belt kind of on the diagonal anyway. Um, so if

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Speaker 1: you count the stores in our eye and you can

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Speaker 1: see about eleven if you live in a place with

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Speaker 1: a lot of light pollution, but wander on out into

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Speaker 1: some sort of cleary night paradise for looking at stars,

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Speaker 1: and you can see as many as fifty. So that's

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Speaker 1: just one hand you measure that we're going to give

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Speaker 1: to you for compared to just all the stars in

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Speaker 1: the sky on top of that. Because I don't know

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Speaker 1: about you, but I um, I grew up in a

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Speaker 1: really rural area part of Tennessee. There's just out in

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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, and I remember just walking out

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Speaker 1: at night and just seeing just this pit of stars

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Speaker 1: above me. You know, it was just like the universe

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Speaker 1: just seemed to go on forever, and you felt like

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Speaker 1: you could just be sucked up into it in any

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Speaker 1: given moment, right Like you felt like you're almost in

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Speaker 1: a planetarium, right those are was here. Grew up in

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Speaker 1: places with a lot of light pollution, it's like that

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Speaker 1: like that, yeah, except with like coyotes in the woods

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Speaker 1: around you. And yeah, I used to actually kind of

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Speaker 1: frighten me because I also watched unsolved mysteries and was

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Speaker 1: just convinced I was going to be abducted by aliens.

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Speaker 1: At any given moment, if I saw them speeding, you know,

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Speaker 1: through the stars in a little UFO or something, they

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Speaker 1: would see me and they'd have to come get me.

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Speaker 1: And now I'm not afraid of all that stuff anymore,

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Speaker 1: and i find myself missing, you know, that kind of

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Speaker 1: night sky. Serious astronomers obviously hate light pollution that, huh, right,

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Speaker 1: because yeah, they're looking for things up there, not so

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Speaker 1: much UFOs or Orion's belt, which they're you know, that's

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Speaker 1: just bush league stuff to them. They're more into things

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Speaker 1: like messing clouds and titans atmosphere, you know, and and

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Speaker 1: what's going on with Saturn's rings and the hunt for exoplanets,

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Speaker 1: and the atmosphere itself, like even on like a clear day,

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Speaker 1: you know, the the atmosphere itself can throw instrumentation out

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Speaker 1: of whack. That's when we send up satellites with telescopes

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Speaker 1: to get get out of all that. But throwing light

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Speaker 1: pollution that just cuts down visibility even more. You're trying

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Speaker 1: to operate an observatory and there's like a stuckies like

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Speaker 1: down the block with all its lights on. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that can interfere with the instrumentation as well. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you need your darkness to see the stars. In case

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Speaker 1: you haven't gathered already. We advocate darkness this podcast Darkness

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Speaker 1: is Your Friend people. And another group that advocates darkness

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Speaker 1: is the International Dark Skies Association dark Skies dot Org.

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Speaker 1: On a more localized level, there's say Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition.

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Speaker 1: Flagstaff Arizona is important because there's a really notable observatory there.

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Speaker 1: So the flag Staff Dark Sky's Coalition is made of

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Speaker 1: um a lot of efforts to just cut down on

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Speaker 1: how much light is going on in the surrounding area,

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Speaker 1: because the more lightning surrounding area, the more obscured view

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Speaker 1: of the stars you have. So you have people like

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Speaker 1: knocking on doors and saying, please sir, turn off that

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Speaker 1: really annoying light. Yeah. That, and like you know, knocking

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Speaker 1: on the doors of like you know, local business associations

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Speaker 1: and you know city government, county ordinances and all. And

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Speaker 1: you get it to where people are using lights more

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Speaker 1: responsibly at night, or they're using them in the right way.

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Speaker 1: For instance, you know you want to light a parking lot,

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Speaker 1: why not just direct the light at the parking lot.

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Speaker 1: No need to have it going off in every direction.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's simple things like that, Simple things, Robert. So,

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Speaker 1: there are a few different kinds of light pollution that

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Speaker 1: mess up the darkness for us, all um. And one

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Speaker 1: of those sky glow, and skyglow is just just imagine

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Speaker 1: looking down upon a city at night, major metropolitan area

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Speaker 1: of your choice, like I don't know, Los Angeles, maybe Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: and what you're gonna see is just kind of this

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Speaker 1: brilliant blanket of skyglow and you're not going to see

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Speaker 1: the darkness. Yeah, it's like any of those, uh for

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Speaker 1: me films where you see people going up to like

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Speaker 1: the Hollywood Sign and they're looking out at l A

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Speaker 1: and it just looks like this glowing golden world. You know,

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Speaker 1: that's just light pollution that it's And then this is

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Speaker 1: my favorite kind of light pollution. You have light trespass.

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Speaker 1: And I love Chevy Chase, and this makes me think

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Speaker 1: of a Chevy Chase movie Christmas Vacation when he painstakingly

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Speaker 1: puts up all of his Christmas lights and finally, oh yeah, Chevy,

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Speaker 1: you finally get it right, or Clark, I should say,

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Speaker 1: and he pretty much blinds the whole neighborhood so this

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Speaker 1: is like Chevy's light is trespassing on all of the

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Speaker 1: other neighbors and their their nice darkness. And I have

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Speaker 1: to say, I'm a fan of Christmas lights, so I

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Speaker 1: was a little conflicted by this type of light pollution.

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Speaker 1: Or it's something like if you live next to a

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Speaker 1: football stadium and every night is Friday nightlights for you, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: why can't they play football in the daytime or in

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Speaker 1: the dark. Why can't they play football in the dark?

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Speaker 1: Excellent glow in the dark materials out there. They're used

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Speaker 1: to getting her what's a couple of more stub toos, right,

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Speaker 1: and then used to like glare. And this is just

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Speaker 1: when lights are aiming directly into your eyes, like those

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Speaker 1: really fancy xenon high intensity discharged lights that tend to

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Speaker 1: blind me when I'm driving. Although I did find a

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Speaker 1: study that says said lights um may annoy oncoming drivers

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Speaker 1: like myself, but they don't disable them. I think the

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Speaker 1: University of Michigan to study on it. Yeah, that's always

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Speaker 1: a bad sell with you know, these headlights will disable

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Speaker 1: other drivers, but um, and then you have stuffite like clutter,

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Speaker 1: And this is this is a kind of late pollution

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Speaker 1: where somebody just got a little bit too happy and

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Speaker 1: putting up street lights and there's an overabundance of them,

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Speaker 1: or maybe there's a building that's lit up like daytime

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Speaker 1: at midnight. So besides being wasteful and making astronomers mad,

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Speaker 1: it has some serious effects on our health and our

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Speaker 1: circadian rhythms. That's right. A lot of the creatures on

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Speaker 1: this planet have evolved to live in um in periods

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Speaker 1: of night, in periods of day where they spend most

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Speaker 1: of their time. It depends, but still they're they're dealing

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Speaker 1: with that system. And again, when you you know, illuminate

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Speaker 1: a BP station with the light of a thousand suns,

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Speaker 1: you're messing up that system. Right, So circadian rhythms depend

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Speaker 1: on light in darkness, and then circadian rhythms impact behavior

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Speaker 1: down the line, like sleeping, like mating, like migration, feeding,

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Speaker 1: I mean, just basic activity levels. Even if you have

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Speaker 1: an animal living in a national park or somewhere out

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Speaker 1: in the wild, you still have residual effects from you know,

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Speaker 1: nearby urban development. So light is everywhere? Is this a surprise?

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Speaker 1: Not so much so. It seems like artificial light is everywhere.

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Speaker 1: You just can't get away from it. So let's talk

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Speaker 1: about some of these poor animals and how they're affected.

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Speaker 1: One of the ones that stuck with me about light

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Speaker 1: pollution how animals are affected was on baby sea turtles.

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Speaker 1: Did you read that and Jessica Chiefman's fine fine article?

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Speaker 1: I did, and I'm familiar with that one from family

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Speaker 1: beach visits in the past. Sad stuff. Yeah, So when

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Speaker 1: these baby sea turtles hatch on a beach, they're supposed

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Speaker 1: to hit to the water right nice, you know, some

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Speaker 1: moonlight playing over the waves, that's how they know where

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Speaker 1: the ocean is right. But then you have things like

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Speaker 1: bright beach lights illuminating the fine white sand, and the

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Speaker 1: port turtle gets confused and sometimes will even head off

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Speaker 1: in the wrong direction, and what do you know, he

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Speaker 1: gets hit by a passing car. He ensconces himself in

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Speaker 1: a seaside resort. It's bad news for Yeah, light pollution

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Speaker 1: not good for the baby turtles. And you have things

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Speaker 1: like owls, and owls like you guys know, are nocturnals.

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Speaker 1: So they take advantage of night to hunt more and

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Speaker 1: it increasingly drives the prey into hiding. They're out there

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Speaker 1: to catch animals that live at night, and if you

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Speaker 1: have it lit up like day, those uh that those

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Speaker 1: those animals are going to be gone. And then you

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Speaker 1: stuff like bioluminescent species, and these are just the organisms

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Speaker 1: that light up per a chemical reaction to um. On land,

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Speaker 1: this might be fireflies and fungus, and then in the

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Speaker 1: water you have fish and alerga that light up. And

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Speaker 1: the problem for these tireless bioluminescent species is that all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden they have competitors, which is the artificial lighting,

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Speaker 1: and it poses a problem. There's another animal of a

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Speaker 1: special note. Humans, Humans of course have to deal with

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Speaker 1: periods of light and darkness like everything else. Most of

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Speaker 1: us tend to spend that time working during the day

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Speaker 1: and sleeping at night. Right, It's interesting. It looked at

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Speaker 1: a number of different studies and some of this is

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Speaker 1: mentioned in our House Stuff Works article by Jessica Toothman

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Speaker 1: as well. It's it seems like it's a careful balance.

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Speaker 1: You know, It's like we need a certain amount of

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Speaker 1: light and and that's that's pretty obvious because you know,

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Speaker 1: you have a lot of people really have to have

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Speaker 1: their light or they grow depressed. It's you know, seasonal

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Speaker 1: effective disorder, etcetera. People to live in the far North. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, places like you know in Alaska or you know,

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Speaker 1: parts of Scandinavia, they actually you know, have to have

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Speaker 1: to have light treatment. You know, they like wake up

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Speaker 1: in the morning, um, you know, turn on a certain

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Speaker 1: kind of lights to help raise their you know, their

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Speaker 1: their levels, you know, stop them drinking all the time.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, we take that for granted that humans need

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Speaker 1: light to survive because you know, we've all seen movies

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Speaker 1: where people live underground and turn into some sort of

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Speaker 1: grotesque monster. Right, but you know there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: ill effects as well to not getting enough darkness. We

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Speaker 1: really need those periods of darkness to remain healthy. Um.

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Speaker 1: This is how it works, all right. We perceive light

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Speaker 1: through our retiness, right, and this then suppresses the penneal gland,

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Speaker 1: which pumps out melotonin, right, a hormone that regulates estrogen

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Speaker 1: and testosterone. Okay, so if you're not getting enough darkness,

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Speaker 1: you're not going to produce enough melatonin alright, Your melotonin

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Speaker 1: or at least your melotonin levels are going to be

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Speaker 1: significantly lower. To break that down, like they say that

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Speaker 1: less than forty minutes of basking under an incandescent light

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Speaker 1: bulb can reduce some melotonal levels of up right, and

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Speaker 1: you want more melotonin because this is what regulates your

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Speaker 1: circadian right right, it helps right late your sleep cycle exactly. Um,

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Speaker 1: A number of you may take and may even take

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Speaker 1: it as a supplement. I take it at the supplement

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Speaker 1: to sleep at night. See. And additional studies have linked

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Speaker 1: artificial lighting to breast, colorectal prostate cancer. And there was

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Speaker 1: even an interesting interesting study from the Journal of Pennial Research.

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Speaker 1: Who knew there was a turnal with that now that's

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Speaker 1: it's pretty specific. Indicate that women in developed nations are

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Speaker 1: five times more likely to get breast cancer that women

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Speaker 1: in underdeveloped countries. And they're thinking there's a link somewhere

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Speaker 1: in there that's related to the amount of light. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're just saying that people in these more developed countries

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Speaker 1: are like a lot of us, are living in environments

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Speaker 1: where you look out the window, you know there's a

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Speaker 1: gas station gleaming in the night. You know, you look

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Speaker 1: overhead and you just see the glow of the city

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Speaker 1: lights everywhere. You know, you get up in the night,

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Speaker 1: you turn on six or seven lights just to go

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Speaker 1: use the restroom. Right, But if you live in a

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Speaker 1: less developed nation, you're more likely to say, get up

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Speaker 1: in the night and go, you know, relieve yourself in

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Speaker 1: the darkness. I use the restroom in the darkness. Anyway.

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Speaker 1: Who turns on the light to go to the bathroom

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Speaker 1: at night? I mean, that is so stupid. I always

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Speaker 1: make it a game to see if I can do

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Speaker 1: as much as possible in the darkness. Well, I like

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Speaker 1: to turn on the lights when I use the restroom. Well,

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Speaker 1: then you're gonna have to pay the consequences with your

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Speaker 1: melitone in there, buddy, that's true. But this brings us

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Speaker 1: to the point. What can we do to cut down

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Speaker 1: on light pollution? Right? You can do a lot of stuff, alright,

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Speaker 1: name one, give me give me something, Uh, turn off

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Speaker 1: the light? Yeah, that's that's a big one, just if

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Speaker 1: you're not using it. I mean it's kind of like,

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Speaker 1: you know, when you're a kid and your dad's tone,

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Speaker 1: you turn off the light when you leave the room.

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Speaker 1: Another one is, do you you don't really need a

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Speaker 1: high watt bulb every outlet, you know, even if they

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Speaker 1: are energy savor bulbs. Cut down the wattage of you're

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Speaker 1: not going to be performing, you know, minor surgery by it. Dimmers.

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Speaker 1: Dimmers are your friend, I understand. They're also fixtures can

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Speaker 1: be really important. Um, like I mentioned earlier, make sure

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Speaker 1: that you have a fixture that covers enough of the

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Speaker 1: light and where it's focused on what you need it for.

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Speaker 1: You know, if you have a floodlight pointed at what

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Speaker 1: you're flooding the light on, it doesn't need to just

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Speaker 1: go everywhere. Yeah. And incidentally, didn't you find something about

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Speaker 1: floodlights creating pockets of darkness anyway? That was something brought

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Speaker 1: up by the International Dark Skies Association, because you know,

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Speaker 1: one argument against the whole, you know, controlling light pollution

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Speaker 1: thing is people say, hey, I live in a terrifying

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Speaker 1: neighborhood and I am going to keep these floodlights on

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Speaker 1: to help protect my home and lights make people feel safe. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and it's you know, you look at any safety

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Speaker 1: list and that's one of the big ones. Illuminate your house.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I stand by that. But they also point

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Speaker 1: out that if you have like a lot of artificial

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Speaker 1: lighting going on in the area, you also end up

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Speaker 1: creating these pockets of darkness, which are really kind of

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Speaker 1: excellent hiding places because because anybody driving by your lights

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Speaker 1: gonna adjust to the really bright lights and those and

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Speaker 1: wherever there's darkness, it's just gonna be deep, impenetrable darkness.

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Speaker 1: So maybe something like motion sensor lights would be a

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Speaker 1: better call. Yeah, that would be That would be a

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Speaker 1: perfect call. And you know the advantage of all this too,

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Speaker 1: is it also cuts down on your your electrac to

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Speaker 1: build at the end of the month. What about Christmas lights?

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Speaker 1: They're necessary? Yeah? I don't know that they're necessary, but

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Speaker 1: they do make me feel festive. Yeah, where did your

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Speaker 1: Christmas lights? On a scale of like one being like

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Speaker 1: total natural darkness, intending like Griswold family Christmas, where do

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Speaker 1: you where do you fall? Um? I would give them,

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Speaker 1: I'm and I think they fall right in the middle

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Speaker 1: like a five. They're very tasteful too. I only use

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Speaker 1: white lights. Well, that's that's not as extreme an example

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Speaker 1: of light pollution as as one of my favorite examples

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Speaker 1: something they apparently had an eight in the nineteen eighties

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Speaker 1: here in Atlanta called Light Up Atlanta. Have you heard

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Speaker 1: of this? Um? David Cross references that you know comedy

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Speaker 1: Batty did, And basically it seems like what what this

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Speaker 1: consisted of is they would turn on all the lights

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Speaker 1: in downtown Atlanta, just like all in these you know,

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Speaker 1: high rise buildings just lighted up, and then they would

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Speaker 1: block off the streets and people would just flow in

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Speaker 1: from all you know this around areas and to look

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Speaker 1: at the lights, to look at the lights and drink

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Speaker 1: in the streets and listen to two bands play and whatnot. Really,

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Speaker 1: so it's just a little up building that people hold,

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Speaker 1: bunch of lit up buildings like the city they're lighting

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Speaker 1: up Atlanta, And and I guess, you know, sea turtles

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Speaker 1: are just wandering in, you know, from as far as

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Speaker 1: close the Pacific Ocean to you know, die in the streets.

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Speaker 1: So what I'm getting from this podcast is are we

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Speaker 1: better off in the dark? Well, maybe not totally dark,

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Speaker 1: but a lot more dark. Yeah, I'm thinking a lot

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Speaker 1: of us could probably use a little more darkness in

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Speaker 1: their life. And I mean that in a illumination way

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Speaker 1: and not enough. So if you want to read more

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Speaker 1: about lightness, darkness, and anything in between, check out how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com or visit the blogs that blogs

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Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com and you can read

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Speaker 1: about everything from flu ridden Mall Santas to robotic book Sniffing.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Guys podcast is over. Turn Out the

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Speaker 1: Lights m for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot Com. Want more how

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Speaker 1: stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff

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